Clean Cut Audio | The Science of Sound and the Art of Great Podcast Audio: 27. Compression for Color, Tone, and Depth

Compression is a topic I've covered extensively (but also not nearly enough) on my YouTube channel. Even with all the hours of teaching I've done on the topic, I've barely touched on the other incredible effects and benefits of learning proper compression techniques.

While a perfectly dialed in compressor will certainly help level out your dynamic range and save your listeners ears from being blown out by sudden changes in loudness, it will also impart a beautiful tone and character to your voice that can otherwise sound bland and lifeless. Not even mentioning the sonic characteristics of hardware and analog emulated plugins, compression can add warmth and body to your voice that is otherwise unattainable, leaving your listeners with a more pleasing and intimate experience.

In this episode we go over the basics of compression, why it can add so much life to a podcast, and we listen to several examples of different intensities of compression to analyze the life it will give to a recording, and we'll learn to identify how much is too much.

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Basic YouTube Video on Compression

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Hardware:

Audio Interface: Apogee Ensemble

Microphone: Shure SM7b

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